


Today and Again

by skorpsion



Series: ropes against wrists [2]
Category: Town of Salem (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-23
Updated: 2016-01-23
Packaged: 2018-05-15 15:38:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5791108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skorpsion/pseuds/skorpsion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Jailor and the Executioner, now on the road. A chance encounter doesn’t set everything right, but things are tilted a little more favourably. “So, what did I do wrong, anyway?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Today and Again

It’s a beautiful spring day when the trees are all blossoming with flower buds and flower petals drift in the warm winds, the sun shining down on the dusty path beneath my feet, when I realise there’s nothing left to do. It almost sounds like an exaggeration to myself, but today is the same day that passed me by a dozen times before.

Nothing left for me, nothing I can come back to. I brush against invisible rings around my wrist, from handcuff marks long faded by now, but it all feels fresh and old tear marks burn in the gentle breeze that curls around my fingers and fills my lungs with lead.

I’m walking along a road to the next town, but I don’t know where I’m headed when I put one foot in front of the other, my boots leaving imprints in the dust. It’s something that I feel like I should’ve realised a long time ago, should’ve put into words before any of this, but everything feels like that to me now. Every thought creeps slowly and endlessly like the road I’m stumbling along right now.

I don’t know what to do anymore. Every word I speak, every harsh breath I take, I feel like I’m still choking on that raw and ragged scream from so long ago, back when the moon was bright and full and I knew I had lost, and I had really lost everything except the handcuffs around my wrist and a rope wrapped in a neat noose around window bars of a prison I left a long time ago. I was good at making nooses, still am, but what good is it now, without a gallows and an audience to watch a man take his last breath? I had lost, he had one, and that was it. It was all gone. No savage breaths from the lungs of a dying body, no more terrified and wary townspeople, just me trapped in the past, a red-rimmed cut caressing my throat and wrapping around my wrist while I’m dragged away.

There’s something wrong with the world now, and I lurch out of my thoughts with sickening vertigo, the winds are blowing wrong and the path is strange beneath my feet-

I’m wandering. I realise this too late, only after my feet take me to a different road from the one I should have taken, and I find myself in front of an out of the way inn, chipped paint on its sign and a dead raccoon slouching against a cornerstone. The windows have hairline thin cracks spiderwebbing actoss their corners, and a thick, ugly crack yawns open on one side of the worn-smooth staircase, but it’s bright and I can feel the warmth all the way from out here. A heavyset man leaning against a wall sneezes, his face bright red under his hat and a bottle loosely held in his right hand. His other hand is bracing himself against a large oak tree trunk, while shards of glass lay themselves out beneath his feet. There’s no way to tell if he came from the inn or not, but there’s nowhere else he could’ve come from. There’s not a building in sight, and none that I can walk to before night falls.

I glance out to the sun, and it hangs low in the sky, rimmed with orange in a dusk-streaked sky. I don’t think I realised how sore my feet were, or hungry I was while I was walking on that dusty path.

There’s bread somewhere in one of my pockets, and I have water in a nearly half-full flask, but…

My fingers brush against one of my pockets. I don’t have much money, it’s barely enough to last for a few more days before I have to go out and find someone who’s willing to let a random stranger work a few jobs to earn enough to eat. I can’t just waste it on a night of, what– a drink or two of old beer, a probably creaky and stained bed? There’s only so much an old place like this can offer, and none of it should be worth spending what little money I have left. The last job didn’t pay well for all the back-breaking days in the sun, but there wasn’t a choice for me. Have to stay on the road, can’t just waste time on little inns that look like they should’ve boarded up their doors years ago.

I take a deep breath, gulp down a mouthful of water that tastes oddly stale now, look back to the inn with candles flickering on the dusty windows, laughter ringing from behind its splintering wooden door.

To hell with it, I say, but not out loud where that man might still hear me, a near empty bottle tilted up to his lips and eyes too bright for that much alcohol. He looks hungry, in that slit-eyed way desperate people do when they’re not quite hungry, but they need something else. Not the type of person I want to be around, not when he’s still conscious and dangerous.

Jangling a few coins in my pocket, I step inside, away from the cooling evening air. Warm air and the smell of fresh baked bread rushes out to greet me, and I almost stagger through the doorway, like the man outside with the emptied bottle in his hand. I don’t know what it is, but something aches inside me for baked bread glazed with honey, dripping candles over a bed of lavender sprigs, a bed worn soft by use. I thought that I couldn’t feel that way anymore, after I spent an eternity screaming my throat hoarse over injustice and am empty gallows. My hand reaches down for the little money I have left, and for a brief moment I wonder how it’s so steady and still, when I feel like I’m drowning in sticky honeyed warmth.

People sit around tables and dripping candles, smiling and laughing and 

There’s a kindly lady wearing a bandanna around her head, a flour-dusted apron tied around her waist, and auburn hair in a bun. For a fleeting moment I wonder if she did all the work in the entire inn, but it isn’t like it’s my business.

She looks to me, smiles as she kneads a lump of dough. “Be right with you in a moment, dear.” Dusting her hands off, she reaches beneath the scuffed counter. She fumbles for a moment, before standing up again and straightening herself out, dropping a heavy, leather-bound ledger with a dull thud against wood. It’s old and cracked, obviously in use for a long time, maybe as long as the inn itself, like the ancient oak tree outside.

She takes a pen, taps on its barrel with a single finger, flips to a page well into the book. Ink blossoms over creamy paper, the pen guiding loops and lines over what might be something about rooming. “I expect you’re going to the next town over?”

I almost hide my surprise. She doesn’t even look at me, doesn’t notice the way I blink and step back, continuing on like this is routine for her.

“Oh, don’t be like that. You learn a lot of stories, being an innkeeper.” She looks up from writing down something I can’t make out in a dense column of name after name after name. “Only one reason a young person like you would be doing here would be to pass over to the next town.”

The pen stops scratching. I suddenly can’t make eye contact with the innkeeper who’s seemed to have settled down into the earth just like the foundations of the inn itself and still knows where I’m going. It makes sense that she would know something about destinations, but she sounds too solemn for that. Could she have been on the same road I was walking earlier today?

“Y… yes, actually. I don’t have much, but I could–” I reach down for what little savings I have to spare, but the woman cuts me off. She tuts and marks something down in loopy copperplate writing that I couldn’t understand even if I saw it from a normal angle.

“Don’t worry, dear. I understand what it’s like, on the road without bread in your mouth every day.” She casts a sympathetic glance towards me, tapping on the ledger with one finger. “I know a nice young man like you, thinking he can’t pay for a warm bed. Going to the same place, too. I’m sure the two of you would be able to get along for a few days?”

I blink at her a few times, to wait for a joke, or a comment about marriage, but nothing comes. She’s smiling at me, eyes merry, ledger still open. The drowning-honey feeling comes back, and this time it fills my throat with heat and chokes it tight, and I have to swallow because I almost can’t believe what she’s offering me. No work, no walking, just a few days of rest before I get back to the path.

“Th-thank you.” I choke out, and she just smiles at me. I still don’t know her name or anything about her other than the fact she’s an innkeeper in a dusty apron, but I’m touched by the gesture.

I give a shaky smile back, my lips curling back uncomfortably and I feel like I’m showing too many teeth. This is a situation that I don’t know how to respond to, but it seems like something I should do, even if I don’t exactly know how to do it. The innkeeper gives a soft smile back, reaches under the counter, something like metal jangling against metal, and she slides a key over scuffed wood. I palm it, feeling its weight and teeth digging into my hand.

“Second door to the right,” she says, pointing at an incongruous hallway lined with wooden doors. “Be sure to not startle your roommate, he’s a bit jumpy.” She chuckles to herself, wipes her brow with her eternally flour-streaked hand, and goes back to kneading her bread.

It’s a small inn, with candles perches on tightly packed tables that I don’t want to accidentally fall on, especially not in a building made of wood. I make my way through, snaking around tables. There’s a man passed out on the floor, a glass in his hand that seems to be filled with water. He twitches and mumbles something I can’t quite hear, his free hand jerking as if to grab something. I try my best to ignore him and step over him, making my way to the room and trying to avoid walking into tables. A small smile spreads over my face, the second one this day, as I step into the hallway and meet a wooden door. The doorknob is scuffed, the paint is cracked at the edges, but that’s all fine.

I knock on the door, two quick raps just to let my new roommate know I’m here, and unlock the door. The smile on my face curls back into a snarl, and I look and only see nooses and a cold, grey cell where I’m supposed to be seeing a dim lantern flickering in even dimmer candlelight, a battered green blanket over familiar shoulders, a dogeared little book, a figure sitting on a bed who isn’t someone I’m ever supposed to see again-

Instead of saying “What the hell is this” or maybe something along the lines of “Why are you here”, a strangled scream twists its way out of my suddenly too-tight throat. Familiar invisible lines snake around my wrists and begin to burn, all while the Jailor’s eyes flicker up at me in alarm, dropping his book with a look of surprise on his face.

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't expect this, but that's okay. It's fine the way it is.
> 
> Tell me if I made any weird grammatical errors, since I wrote most of this at midnight and just sort of screamed with my fingertips. Reviews would be amazing.


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